people like him. Still, Yamashita felt lucky.
Though homeless for now, he had just landed
work at an express delivery company for
175,000 yen (about $1,400) a month, not plush
in high-priced Japan but enough to get by on.
Prosperous bay residents had complained
to me how their luxury condos had cratered
in value since the slump began, but Yamashita
wasn't bitter. "Passersby give us dirty looks,"
he said, but homelessness had taught him to
live without fear of not fitting into Japan's con
formist society.
"In Japan," he said, "it's always been one rule
after another. But here I can be my own man."
TODAY THE URGE for greater social
freedom rivals the bulldozer in shap
ing life on the bay. This impulse was
on display the morning I visited Venus Fort,
one of Tokyo's ubiquitous waterfront malls.
Billed as a "theme park for ladies," its main
concourse resembled an antiseptic Italy, whose
upscale shops attract a new species of bay
dweller-the parasaito shinguru, or parasite
single. Mostly young women in their twenties
and thirties, they generally live with their par
ents and seem intent on liberating themselves
through conspicuous consumption.
"Is it getting dark in here?" I asked my
appointed guide, Tamami Yamanaka, a young
single with chic auburn hair. "Yes" she replied.
"People buy more in the late afternoon," so
a computer-driven "sky" in the high vaulted
ceiling produces a new sunset every two hours.
I was intrigued. Had sales data confirmed the
sundown buying theory? "No" said Yamanaka,
smiling. "I think the owner"-a man-"just
heard it someplace."
Personally, Yamanaka thought Venus Fort's
popularity stemmed from a potent shift in
gender roles. For centuries survival in Japan's
male bastion forced most women to focus on
attracting a mate, but bad economic times cut
deeply into the perks and power of the coun
try's corporate samurai. As young women take
up the slack, getting more and better paying
jobs (though at salaries comparably lower than
males), they are postponing marriage and
rethinking their options.
"We women don't expect much from men
today," Yamanaka said matter-of-factly. "But we
do want to better ourselves." We had paused
near a boutique called Accessory Creation Mix.
Inside, customers pressed the counter, order
ing cosmetics tailored to their skin's precise
complexion. Did today's freer spirit connect
with bigger ideas of feminism and equality? I
asked. That might come later, said Yamanaka,
but for now women were enjoying the gender
jujitsu. "Men are good for taking you out to
dinner," she said, "but in the future women will
make the decisions."
That's already happening across the bay in
Chiba, where Akiko Domoto, the prefecture's
first woman governor, put the local old-boy
political network on notice by ordering a halt
to all further building at Sanbanze, one of the
bay's few surviving wetlands. She's determined
to give Chiba a badly needed makeover.
"Tokyo is the capital, but it doesn't have to
be the center of everything," she said late one
evening when I caught up with her at her satel
lite office in Tokyo. Years of well-documented
political corruption had reinforced Chiba's
image as a seedy area of smokestacks and rice
"Becoming like New
York was our vision of
the future. But now
that we've reached the
future, are we satisfied?
It doesn't feel like it."
fields whose six million citizens were ridiculed
by snooty Tokyoites (often concealing their
own Chiba origins) as irredeemable rustics.
Domoto, a 70-year-old former TV journal
ist, said she owed her surprise victory in 2001
to housewives and younger voters who were
fed up with Chiba's underdog status and wanted
to see action on neglected issues such as
the environment and education. "The people
of Chiba are shouting for change," she insisted.
To test the decibel level I took to the road
for a hitchhiking tour of Chiba's coastline, as
I've done in other parts of Japan whenever I've
wanted to hear what ordinary citizens have to
say. Thus one brisk May morning I stood on
the shoulder of Highway 16 near where the
Aqua-line bridge steps down on the eastern
shore, marveling at the area's transformation.
Twenty years ago this part of the prefecture
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, OCTOBER 2002